The present invention relates to a vehicle with an air conditioner, particularly to a vehicle with an air conditioner, in which the air conditioner uses high-pressure gas, such as carbon dioxide, as coolant, that can prevent a heat exchanger from being pushed into a vehicle cabin at a vehicle frontal crash.
Conventionally, the heat exchanger of the air conditioner for a vehicle is formed in a substantially flat and rectangular-parallelepiped shape and thereby it has a relatively great rigidity in a direction parallel to its maximum-area face. The air conditioner with such heat exchanger is generally disposed near an instrument panel of the vehicle. In this case, when a vehicle frontal crash (front face crash or front offset crash) occurs, a power train including an engine, an exhaust manifold and so on is forced to move rearward. Thereby, there is a concern that the heat exchanger would be pushed back into a vehicle cabin without being deformed and contact a passenger in the vehicle cabin. Accordingly, some measures to prevent this situation have been required.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,927,382 discloses the cooling unit of the air conditioner for an automotive vehicle, in which the evaporator is disposed obliquely relative to the vehicle longitudinal direction in the cooling unit. Herein, groove portions are formed at the case of the cooling unit. When at the vehicle frontal crash, knees of a passenger seated in an assistant's seat hit against the groove portions, the case is broken and the evaporator is rotated by the crash impact so as to be located in parallel to the vehicle width direction. Thereby, the cooling unit is prevented from contacting the passenger further.
Meanwhile, in a case where the high-pressure gas, such as carbon dioxide, is used as the coolant, a pressure of 5 Mpa or greater acts on supply pipes and the heat exchanger of the air conditioner in its normal operation state. Therefore, such supply pipes and heat exchanger are generally made of steel materials with high rigidity, and coupling forces for them are also set to be properly strong. In the cooling unit of the air conditioner of the above-described patent document, the heat exchanger is formed of multilayer tubes that are made of metal film plates, such as aluminum film plates, and the heat exchanger is configured so as to be rotated by the passenger's knees hitting against the case. Herein, if the above-described cooing unit was applied to the air conditioner using the high-pressure gas, there would be concern that the heat exchanger could not be rotated properly because the supply pipes and heat exchanger themselves and their coupling forces are made relatively strong, as described above.